biological computers

 there is a lot of scary stuff out there about neuro links with computers, leading to  HomoDeus and other ideas of the transhumanism movement.

HomoDeus book sets out to examine possibilities of the future of Homo sapiens. The premise outlines that during the 21st century, humanity is likely to make a significant attempt to gain happiness, immortality, and God-like powers. Throughout the book, Harari openly speculates various ways that this ambition might be realised in the future based on the past and present

I was just reading about this on my tablet so don't have links yet.

But todays's stuff is about using human brain cells to make biocomputers.

LINK

SCIENCE ALERT:Breakthrough: Model Organs Built With Cells From Living Fetuses

uH, LIVING FETUSES?

Scientists have grown small but complex models of human organs from live fetus cells for the first time, giving experts new insight into our development and potential treatments for malformations while in the womb. These organoids aren't full replicas of organs, but they're close enough to the real deal that they can be used to study disease and other aspects of human biology that are difficult to investigate in living people.,

apparently these fetal cells came from amniotic fluid, not aborted fetuses, but not everyone is trying to be ethical in these things:

Organoids have previously been grown from the cells of terminated fetuses, which comes with ethical concerns and tight regulation restrictions. They can also be grown from adult stem cells, but this is much later in the body's development. What the new tissue potentially gives scientists is a way of studying problems in the womb, many weeks before the baby is born. Plenty of further study will be needed to get to that stage, but it's something that we're now closer to doing.

Wikipedia article on cerebral organoid, for later reading.

the article says these cells come from Neural organoids are created by culturing pluripotent stem cells into a three-dimensional culture that can be maintained for years...but the link to PPStemcells say that these can come from:They are found in both embryonic and adult organisms, but they have slightly different properties in each.

from wayback machine: a 2009 article on what was being planned. For later reading

happy happy utopia

 

,,,,,,,

......

this one pushes happy happy transhumanism as a way to go against aging (the really enthusiastic types see it as a way to cheat death).

 But of course the dirty little secret is that ordinary old people are useless eaters and they will figure out a way to eliminate these unneeded people

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

as TMarshall points out: The temptation of men to become God goes way back.

He points out that in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, we unite with God to do his will.

But this is not a humble service of God but arrogancy striving to become like God.

another discussion here.

Sigh.

now they are pushing killing yourself because you are old and bored

annalthouse linked to an article in the NYTimesmagazine where a 70 plus year old lady plans suicide because she is old and bored. 

 From "The Last Thing My Mother Wanted/Healthy at age 74, she decided there was nothing on earth still keeping her here, not even us" (NY Magazine)

(the mother opts for assisted suicide, available in Switzerland)("She had a three-pronged rationale... The world was going to hell, and she did not want to see more; she did not get joy out of the everyday pleasures of life or her relationships; and she did not want to face the degradations of aging"). 

best comment:

Aggie said... The banality of evil, in a new, family-friendly format. "Mom, it's your last day on earth, don't worry about the subscriptions !" Is the family enabling, or just psycho?

this is the next fad that will be pushed on the elders, just like the trans fad. Fear of nursing homes of course: the alternative? caregivers. Or maybe making nursing homes more friendly.

Of course, 20 years ago at a conference, one of the docs there said a lot of his patients were storing up pills for suicide. I think he said they had attended a meeting on end of life, or maybe just they are their friends talked about it. That was when Soros Open Soeiety was pushing end of life discussions, pretending they were not going to be pro euthanasia, but only discussing it as one of many choices.

But even saints said painful dying would tempt one to kill themselves. 

But of course this isn't about painful dying: It is about a culture where useless people are made to feel they should kill themselves.

Well that is one way to save money.

------------------

the Japanese have a different problem: Too many elders dying alone at home.

A total of 21,716 people died at home alone between January and March, and about 80 percent of them were 65 years old or older, according to figures released on May 13. ...

During the first three months this year, 17,034 people who died at home alone were seniors. The deaths, including suicides, were based on reports that police received from doctors and others....

A total of 21,716 people died at home alone between January and March, and about 80 percent of them were 65 years old or older, according to figures released on May 13......

The estimate noted that today’s elderly people who live alone are likely to have siblings and children who live separately.

But in 2050, there will be a sharp increase in the number of elderly people living alone with no children, siblings or other close relatives.

Japan has a secret tradition of taking grannies up the mountain so they can die. Like abandoning unwanted children, it is not murder of course: someone could save them.

But in these modern times, it will soon become a problem because it is not out of -poverty that this will be done, but because no one cares.

And yes, some Japanese professor actually suggested this should become public policy. Of course, he was working in the USA, (Yale) where he can say such things and not be shamed. 

 A Yale professor suggested that Japan's old people should kill themselves in a mass suicide, and it made him a celebrity

A Yale professor said in an interview that mass suicide could solve Japan's aging population issue.

His controversial opinions have made him popular with Japan's youth, per The New York Times.

Yusuke Narita now has a large social media following and even appeared in an energy drink advert.

Sigh. 

............................

and during covid, a lot of the nursing home deaths in the UK were end of life protocol instead of treating them. 

 

 54. The care home thought that they should give her a mild sedative to stop her getting up and down so much and help her sleep through the night and keep the cannula in. My mum agreed to that but if she had known what the sedative was she would have said no as she was a retired nurse and, they (care home) should not have asked her anyway as she was not authorised to approve this. 55. At this point my grandmother was eating and drinking by herself, moving to the toilet herself, that there was

only mild symptoms and that they were giving her the nasal oxygen just as a precaution as her stats were a little low but, with the cannula in, she was fine. Her stats had actually improved 65 I was provided with a document at a meeting I had with one of the solicitors. The document was the DNR but this had my name written on it. I was shocked as this was the first time I had seen this document and did not even know it existed. Also from day 15 Direct link to this witness statement

 https://www.covid19inquiry.scot/sites/default/files/ev-documents/sci-trnspt-000029.pdf

https://www.covid19inquiry.scot/sites...

Elite destruction of marriage: Pushing polyamory

 From AnnAlthouse

March 11, 2023: "To Fix a Broken Marriage, an Experiment With Polyamory" ("The couple tried polyamory, which rekindled their passion, but it did not address their other issues...").

May 16, 2023: "Interested in Polyamory? Check Out These Places/Laws granting rights to people in polyamorous relationships are being recognized in more cities" ("We have a population that’s more open to these ideas, and many of these folks are either currently nonmonogamous or have tried nonmonogamy or at the very least know someone who’s polyamorous").

January 13, 2024: "How a Polyamorous Mom Had ‘a Big Sexual Adventure’ and Found Herself/In her memoir, 'More,' Molly Roden Winter recounts the highs and lows of juggling an open marriage with work and child care" ("I felt like there were no stories from the mainstream about it, and I felt very closeted.... It often feels like mothers are not supposed to be sexual beings").

January 19, 2024: "My Relationships Have No Clothes/I have no moral objection to infidelity. ("If I had to wait until he had no other partner, we would have missed out on this relationship, which is 90 percent TV jokes and 'Mad Men' quotes. We never would have the pride it brings each of us when we make the other laugh out loud").

April 15, 2024: "Lessons From a 20-Person Polycule/How they set boundaries, navigate jealousy, wingman their spouses and foster community" ("It’s not clear when the word ['polycule'] was coined, but it seems to have started catching on around 15 years ago to suggest an intricate structure formed of people with overlapping deep attachments: romantic, sexual, sensual, platonic").

Brazil and the demonic pop singers

 Madonna just held a huge free concert in Rio that had posters of her dressed as the Virgin of sorrows.

Another day, another blaspheming action by the singer.

Although the fact the kid she stole adopted in Malawi who had a father and was not an orphan, we now read he is going around with her in a dress. So in the eyes of God, that is a bigger sin than simple blasphemy. Madonna meet millstone?

And a couple weeks ago when another pop singer  gave her concert in Rio, the city projected ads from her concert on the famous statue of Christ Redeemer.

As her sweep of Rio de Janeiro shows got underway this week, the pop superstar and her legions of devoted fans were greeted by the wide-open arms of the world’s most-famous Christ statue, sporting a projected image of a Swift-inspired T-shirt...On social media, Swifties asked Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes to project onto the statue a likeness of the "Junior Jewels" shirt from Swift's “You Belong with Me” music video. Their plea went viral. Paes, who once called the singer the “Madonna of our times,” said he'd take the matter to the Rev. Omar Raposo, the rector of the sanctuary. The 125-foot Christ the Redeemer was illumi

The priest's excuse: He asked the fans to raise money for the poor, which they did. 

Ah but who is feeding the souls of the poor? Man does not live by bread alone.

I hadn't been paying attention to the Christians who warned that she is also into the demonic, but after reading that I sort of believer it.

elites hating chidldren Culture of death part 37

 via AnnAlthouse:

"[T]hey agreed on basically everything, including that new human life is not a gift but a needless perpetuation of suffering." "Babies grow up to be adults, and adulthood contains loneliness, rejection, drudgery, hopelessness, regret, grief, and terror. Even grade school contains that much. Why put someone through that, Alex and Dietz agreed, when a child could just as well never have known existence at all? The unborn do not appear to be moaning at us from the void, petitioning to be let into life. This idea—that having children is unethical—has come to be known as antinatalism...." Writes Elizabeth Barber in "The Case Against Children/Among the antinatalists" (Harper's). The author wants a baby.

............

she then quotes more stuff:

“I do not think that one should have children; I observe in the acquisition of children many risks and many griefs, whereas a harvest is rare, and even when it exists, it is thin and poor,” the Greek philosopher Democritus is supposed to have said. He thought people should adopt, as “one can take one child out of many who is according to one’s liking.” 

 In The Childfree Christ, published in 2021, the Belgian antinatalist Théophile de Giraud argues that the Bible is an antinatalist text, a view emphatically held by Kierkegaard, who found it obvious that the Bible instructs the Christlike not to have kids. 

Jesus gave his followers lots of examples of how to be good in the world, but one thing he did not do was start a nuclear family. Instead, he collected a spiritual family, like that replicated in nunneries and monasteries. 

 Some Christian sects—most famously, the Cathars, who were sentenced to death by Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth century—later found cause to conclude that the Christly thing to do was not to procreate. “Better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun,” writes the author of Ecclesiastes. “May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived,’ ” says the miserable Job. Likewise, the Talmud has it that “it would have been preferable had man not been created than to have been created.” 

 The less religious of our ancestors meanwhile found in the ugliness of the human world confirmation that God had not created this mess; we had. Human suffering served no plan besides the human project to grow a workforce of replaceable laborers.

Al-Ma‘arri, a Syrian atheist born in the tenth century, wrote that existence was plainly not Allah’s gift, but a life sentence, a punishment. He was blinded at four by smallpox and, as a non-believer in a believing time and place, lived alone in a cave. 

“I know but this,” he wrote, “that him I hold in error / Who helps to propagate Time’s woe and terror.”...

one person comments:

Doesn't get any more evil than this. God says: be fruitful and multiply. The evil one says doing so is bad for you. Better that you don't. Kill your offspring, kill yourself. God is the light and the life of the world. The evil one is darkness and death.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

 

working with communists.

Fowler

has an article questioning the Pope working with communists.

an ideology bent on liberating humanity from the “opium of the people” and conforming the populace into a unified groupthink is, at its core, opposed to the worship of God, and the inalienable rights gifted by Him.

 

As Communist philosopher Karl Marx once proclaimed: “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”

 

The path to true happiness, then, is found in humanity — and not in pursuing a relationship with a transcendent Creator.

 

As Jesus Christ reveals “No one can serve two masters”; under communism, however, that master is the state. There is no room for God. Yet proponents of this genocidal, anti-Christian

Japanese caregiver fatigue, dead elderly

 

lab babies from stem cells

 UKMail of course

California biotech startup aims to make lab-grown BABIES and believes it 'will change society as we know it' This early technology would create eggs and sperm from any cell in the body IVG could allow same-sex and transgender couples to have biological children....

so more separation of marriage from children, and of course, it means making children to order as a commodity to be bought and sold, and discarded if imperfect, not as a gift of God. 

Both Mr Krisiloff and Mr Hurtado, for example, are gay and hope the treatment could help them each have their own kids. 

duh. 

 '[This] really opens the door, if you can create the eggs, to be able to help people have children that otherwise don't have options right now,' Mr Krisiloff said. This practice differs from widely used methods like in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intrauterine insemination (IUI), which still require sperm and egg.

yes, where you pay a woman to take dangerous chemicals to produce eggs.

And who will carry the child to term? Again exploiting a woman to do this...

until they find a way to grow the kid in a machine too. 

Muslims protest religious indoctrination: So where are the bishops?

 With the Supreme court overturning laws made by liberal courts, could the LG etc indoctrination in the schools be the next shoe to fall?

After all, the abortion law overturned was by the court. The Gay marriage was first in Massachusetts where a gay judge mandated gay marriage (and the legislature refused to overturn it) and later by the courts decriminalizing gay behavior and allowing gay marriage.

Well, teaching Protestantism and reading the Bible in public schools was also a SC decision... and it soon extended to the point that any religious discussion of Christianity was outlawed.

but nature abhores a vacuum and the liberals took over the teachers union and the schools and the social workers and the libraries, and voila, pornography in school libraries for preteens, teaching kids there is no gender, or they can choose it, and rewarding those who agree, and don't forget hiding this from parents.

So where are the Catholic bishops? Being understanding of course.

And when someone like Bishop Stickland protests awarding a group promoting blasphemy and religious bigotry, he gets a visit from the Vatican.

Sigh.

But like the Muslim doctors who refused to do abortions when I was in training (and I was one of the few so called Christians who did this), maybe it is because they actually believe in God and try to follow God's law.

Yes, some Christians do: but they are dismissed as religious right bigots, and the Trad Catholics do, and voila someone leaked an FBI memo saying they were dangerous terrorists and needed to be infiltrated by the FBI. (I suspect the Muslims are already infiltrated by the FBI and they know it, but stand their ground).

Enter the Muslims, who do take religion seriously and know they are outsiders.

GetReligion reports on the Muslim parents vs the school boards.

Washington Post story that I have been thinking about during the past week or two. That headline: “Hundreds of Md. parents protest lessons they say offend their faiths.” The Post team appears to have worked hard to keep the main news hook out of that headline and even the lede.

Hundreds of parents demonstrated outside the Montgomery County Board of Education’s meeting … demanding that Maryland’s largest school district allow them to shield their children from books and lessons that contain LGBTQ+ characters.

Still in the dark, right? Keep reading:

The crowd was filled largely with Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents, who say the school system is violating their religious rights protected under the First Amendment by not providing an opt-out. Three families have filed a lawsuit against the school system.

The books that feature LGBTQ+ characters are a part of a supplemental curriculum the school system launched this academic year. It adds titles for every grade level, including kindergarten to fifth grade, where the curriculum has been the most controversial. A few months ago, a handful of parents had spoken at board meetings about the issue, but the demonstrations have expanded to hundreds.

ya think? This is about putting these sexual lessons into all sorts of subjects where they don't belong.

Montgomery County school officials said that Maryland state law does not permit parents to opt their children out of certain lessons, except for a specific unit on sexuality and family life in the health education curriculum.

Still, Darge, an Orthodox Christian, said he would like the option for his children to opt out of reading books with LGBTQ+ themes because those themes do not align with his family’s faith.

how dare he.

Alḥamdulillah after many weeks of working with a number of prominent scholars in N. America, we have jointly written a statement of monumental importance entitled:
“Navigating Differences: Clarifying Sexual and Gender Identity in Islam."

Full PDF: https://t.co/fdQ9gyoVfS pic.twitter.com/A3iFhZTZDp

— Dr. Yasir Qadhi (@YasirQadhi) May 23, 2023

the twitter discussion protests that this is the Sunni point of view, but given that the Iranian Shiite mullahs also have protested the US spreading the gay/gender/promiscuity agenda all over the world, I don't think it is only the Sunnis who think this way.

Killing the poor as a medical treatment

 NatReview reports:

two Canadian bioethicists just published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics — a prestigious British Medical Journal publication — arguing that “unjust social conditions” justify lethal jabs (euphemistically called MAiD, for “medical assistance in dying”). The argument claims that killing is a form of “harm reduction.”

The authors even admit such cases have already occurred legally in Canada. From “Choosing Death in Unjust Conditions: Hope, Autonomy, and Harm Reduction” (my emphasis):

In 2022, an individual in Canada, who had been diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), received MAiD. However, by their own description, their decision to choose MAiD was driven primarily by the fact that they were unable to access affordable housing compatible with MCS. While it was true that they suffered from an illness, disease or disability that caused ‘enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them and cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable’ as specified under the eligibility criteria of Bill C-14 [that recently expanded eligibility beyond death being “reasonably foreseeable], the primary source of their suffering was an inability to find appropriate housing, not the condition itself. Another person, also with MCS, writes: ‘I’ve applied for MAiD essentially because of abject poverty’.

...................

and in February, a Yale Professor from Japan said we should kill off the elderly:

A professor at Yale University has sparked outrage for suggesting that elderly Japanese residents should take part in a “mass suicide” by disembowelment to help the country deal with its rapidly aging population.

Yusuke Narita, 37, an assistant professor of economics at the Ivy League school, has gained hundreds of thousands of followers on social media as he touted the controversial solution in multiple interviews and publications — but he’s also drawn ire, the New York Times reported. “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,”

Narita said during a news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” he added, referring to the practice of disembowelment utilized by dishonored Samurai in the late 19th century. Last year, Narita answered a boy’s question about seppuku by telling a group of students about a scene from “Midsommar,” a 2019 flick in which a Swedish cult sends one of its oldest members to jump off a cliff.

“Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer,” he said. “So if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

italics mine 

 

He also has discussed euthanasia, predicting that the “possibility of making it mandatory in the future” will become part of the public discourse.

actually, the practics was not unknown in ancient/medieval Japan and has a name: from Wikipedia; Ubasute 

Ubasute (姥捨て, "abandoning an old woman", also called obasute and sometimes oyasute 親捨て "abandoning a parent") is a mythical practice of senicide in Japan, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die.^[1]

the Wikipedia page has a list of western books/films etc that push the idea (ignoring the many more films/books that glamourize the killing of the handicapped, usually pushed as something they wanted to do).

Popular delusions and the madness of the tictoc crowds

Dr. Malone, who took on the covid mRNA vaccine coverup estalishment, has a nice article pointing out that the gender wars are causing a delusion among the young.

In 2018, Psychology Today published an article summarizing trans research and what was happening in the culture that is truly shocking. That is, a large minority of kids have developed a belief system whereby they, as a group, espouse that being a normal biological female or male is akin to being immoral and evil.

 italics mine

This bizarre concept has spread across social media and has infiltrated even down to elementary schools. This is a set of cultural beliefs which have morphed from groupthink and rebellion on social media to going viral throughout an age cohort which is vulnerable to new concepts being permanently instilled into their mindsets.

 

Why Is Transgender Identity on the Rise Among Teens? Psychology Today article. 2018

 

A new study of social contagion raises important clinical and ethical questions. Psychology Today, 2018 “In general, cis-gendered people are considered evil and unsupportive, regardless of their actual views on the topic.

To be heterosexual, comfortable with the gender you were assigned at birth, and non-minority places you in the ‘most evil’ of categories with this group of friends.

Statement of opinions by the evil cis-gendered population are consider phobic and discriminatory and are generally discounted as unenlightened.” Parents further reported being derogatorily called “breeders” by their children, or being routinely harassed by children who played “pronoun-police."

The observation that they no longer recognized their child’s voice came up time and again in parental reports. In turn, the eerie similarity between the youth's discourse and trans-positive online content was repeatedly emphasized. Youth were described as “sounding scripted," “reading from a script,” “wooden,” “like a form letter,” “verbatim,” “word for word," or “practically copy and paste." Littman raises cautions about encouraging young people’s desire to transition in all instances.

From the cases reviewed in her study, she concluded that what she terms “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) appears to be a novel condition that emerges from cohort and contagion effects and novel social pressures. From this perspective, ROGD likely exhibits an aetiology and epidemiology that is distinct from the "classical" cases of gender dysphoria documented in the DSM.

This Wikipedia article has a lot of references on this phenomenum.

and Project Gutenburg has the classic book on this 

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay

I haven't commented on this, because I live in the Philippines where we have baclas and trans and tomboys (and commercials with Vice Ganda) and have no problem with it: Because we see them as outsiders but part of the family. They do not threaten the family because this is a Christian society where the family is the basis of society. But in areas like Makati, with it's large American expat gay influence, I worry it soon will be, especially as BongBong Marcos is kissing the ass of the Biden administration in hopes that the US will finally decide to help us stop Chinese aggression.

In contrast, the gender stuff that seems to be pushed in US Schools is anti family and this powerful group behind this is using civil rights to push it on the media.

So Bud Light lauded a person who is on twitter pushing his transition (i.e. pushing it and getting postive feedback for his actions on many levels). In essence, the corporation is seen as backing a preacher of the gender neutral utopian ideas that undermine the family: Ideas that are so toxic that even Pope Francis has condemned them.

And to make things worse, the Biden adminstation is pushing this on many levels to poor countries, where the family is the core of their society. Not just Biden but the UN and the EU.

And then they wonder why Russia (who is pushing tradtional values) and China (who is pragmatic and ignoring the fight) are more popular?

Crowd delusions are not a new phenomenum.

Dancing mania, witch hunts, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, wars of religion etc are all based on this: toxic ideas that spread and are picked up by true believers.

so follow the money? Dr. Malone also notes:

This is big business: So who profits from this new mind contagion? Most notably hospitals, surgeons, physicians, healthcare workers, insurance companies and big pharma are making huge amounts of profit from kids and adults “transitioning” from one sex to another.

and making it popular in the echochamber, where schools, celebrities, and big businesses all affirm this as truth.

This is essentially the government proselytizing a religion in public schools, leading wit CarpeDonktum to post a twitter thread pretending to be a teacher encouraging his student to embrace Christianity.

Not every parent is ready to accept a child identifies as Christian. For some of these kids, I am the only person they have told. It would violate my conscience to out these kids to their parents. I wish I didn't have to, but spiritually affirming care must be private. https://t.co/8DHuFYGiwB

— Carpe Donktum🔹 (@CarpeDonktum) April 17, 2023

LOL

Trans as social contagion

LINK ,

Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t). 

The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.

To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. 

That’s all it took. 

When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable. Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor. 

Side Effects

Many encounters with patients emphasized to me how little these young people understood the profound impacts changing gender would have on their bodies and minds. But the center downplayed the negative consequences, and emphasized the need for transition. As the center’s website said, “Left untreated, gender dysphoria has any number of consequences, from self-harm to suicide. But when you take away the gender dysphoria by allowing a child to be who he or she is, we’re noticing that goes away. The studies we have show these kids often wind up functioning psychosocially as well as or better than their peers.” 

There are no reliable studies showing this. Indeed, the experiences of many of the center’s patients prove how false these assertions are. 

at this part, they describe the physical side effects of the powerful medications given to these kids

Another disturbing aspect of the center was its lack of regard for the rights of parents—and the extent to which doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.

In Missouri, only one parent’s consent is required for treatment of their child. But when there was a dispute between the parents, it seemed the center always took the side of the affirming parent.

My concerns about this approach to dissenting parents grew in 2019 when one of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers. 

I had done the original intake call, and I found the mother quite disturbing. She and the father were getting divorced, and the mother described the daughter as “kind of a tomboy.” So now the mother was convinced her child was trans. But when I asked if her daughter had adopted a boy’s name, if she was distressed about her body, if she was saying she felt like a boy, the mother said no. I explained the girl just didn’t meet the criteria for an evaluation. 

Then a month later, the mother called back and said her daughter now used a boy’s name, was in distress over her body, and wanted to transition. This time the mom and daughter were given an appointment. Our providers decided the girl was trans and prescribed a puberty blocker to prevent her normal development. 

The father adamantly disagreed, said this was all coming from the mother, and a custody battle ensued. After the hearing where our doctor testified in favor of transition, the judge sided with the mother. 

Sigh

Click here to read Jamie Reed’s letter to the Missouri AG.

Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria. 

In the past 15 years, according to Reuters, the U.S. has gone from having no pediatric gender clinics to more than 100. A thorough analysis should be undertaken to find out what has been done to their patients and why—and what the long-term consequences are.

There is a clear path for us to follow. Just last year England shut down the Tavistock Centre, the only youth gender clinic in the country, after an investigation revealed shoddy practices and poor patient treatment. Sweden and Finland, too, have investigated pediatric transition and greatly curbed the practice, finding there is insufficient evidence of help, and danger of great harm. 

Some critics describe the kind of treatment offered at places like the Transgender Center where I worked as a kind of national experiment. But that’s wrong. 

Experiments are supposed to be carefully designed. Hypotheses are supposed to be tested ethically. The doctors I worked alongside at the Transgender Center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: “We are building the plane while we are flying it.” No one should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft.

The Pope is dead: Benedict conspiracy theories still alive

 with Pope Benedict dying, the conspiracy theories about his election and resignation will die, or maybe not.

My conspiracy theory?

At the time, the European Union was planning to indict him for covering up pedophilia, never mind that Pope JP2 put him in charge of that office to clean it up, and even Professor Podles, who wrote one of the books on the problem, admit he tried.

And at the time, bank investigations by someone interfered with the Vatican bank: something about money laundering (which all the big banks do and get away with, and the infiltration of the vatican Bank by mafir is well known: see conspiracy theory about the death of JP1 or Windswept housem or even the movie Godfather 3). 

Well, anyway, ignoring the plank in their own institutions, the powers that be decided to criticize the mote in those of the vatican and voila, closed the ATM so that the (civilian) employees couldn't get paid.

Third: There was a large 300 page report on the infiltration of the church by dissadents/ gay mafia/ regular mafia/ freemasons/ bad guys (it was never clear) and this was a secret: (was this why the butler got charged for leaking? Who knows... and isn't it strange that as soon as Cardinal Burke started finding problems, an old, discredited pedophile case against him in Australia put him in jail, with the press there condemning him (in a way that reminds one of the anti religion hysterical reporting against the church lady whose baby was killed by a dingo but accused of killing her kid... see the movie a cry in the dark).

Well, anyway, the rule is that when there is a new pope, everyone in the Vatican curia and offices automatically turn in their resignations. Meaning that instead of persuing a long easily twarted legal case against each one suspected of wrong doing, they would no longer be employees and could be replaced by people who would be honest and true.

But when Francis took over, that large report disappeared into a black hole and was never seen again.

Finally, the manipulation of the college of cardinals by the St Gallen mafia let them promote Francis as a good guy, and many thought because he was an outsider he could do the church  cleanup better than an insider. Alas, this has proved false: he  has proved that the word "jesuitical" is still valid: i.e. lying and manipulative to get something done.

So what can we do? Pray the rosary.

the anti church and the NWO?

 Father Z notes the links.

the video is gone except for one second. Hmm..

Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue on 31 August 2022. He goes over the many ways in which the left, fully in charge, is weaponizing government and demonizing resistance.If you swap out some terms and name of players, there is a parallel with what is going on in the Church today. Try it as a mind exercise. One to one parallels? No. But they are close in a way that is creepy. Does this surprise? No, it does not. The same players are on both playing fields, secular and sacred. Hence, their bed-sharing with the one world government crowd, people pushing population control, forelock-tugging in the direction of China for the sake of money, and determination to crush what they perceive as a threat. For the political left in these USA the new threat to everything is anyone who didn’t vote for them. For the ecclesial left pretty much everywhere, anyone who clings to whatever was before their interpretation of Vatican II....

lots more there.

AnnBarnhardt is even more blunt: They don't really believe in God or Jesus and it's all about power. 

Up until now, corrupt elements in The Church did not desire the destruction of the One True Church, precisely because the One True Church was, in fact, the legitimate entity that they were happy to use as the front for their racketeering organizations. But now, what these people see is that there is a “replacement” for The One True Church being built and prepared, and, they all hope, will soon be unveiled, and The One True Church will be eradicated. The replacement is, of course, the apostate anti-church, which Antipope Bergoglio is the frontman and his claque of demon faggots are busily preparing, and will serve as the ultimate, perfected racket. The reason the enemies of Christ and His Church are no longer content to subsist quietly within the One True Church is because they know that a “better” matrix is coming soon – a matrix that will be even more conducive to their agenda of acquiring power, money and sex/sodomy, and for fighting their unholy war against God Himself. That matrix is Bergoglio’s post-modernist, Freemasonic apostate anti-church.

GetReligion discusses the demise of the mainline churches by the gay heresy and how the next one to fall is the Methodists. The fight is about who inherits the institutions and money of course.

and the people will flee to independent churches, who are not under any authority so can deteriorate if the leader is corrupted, and of course, it means the ones pushing or preaching christianity are fragmented. It makes a difference if you speak in the name of a huge diocese or just because you run a church/megachurch (which of course are vulnerable to the IRS etc in the future who will attack not churches but their outreach schools etc)

 

related item: Making a pedophile who pushed heresy a hero. 

all of this has made me depressed and unable to blog... what is worse is that I have been unable to pray. Part of it is recovering from a flu/bronchities three weeks ago (the medicine makes me sleepy). But I'm sure some of it is spiritual.

I did manage to get to church last week so maybe things are improving.

Just a few notes on the mass

 Anthony Esolen notes the problem about the Latin mass ignores the reality of the way the mass has been distorted /trivialized post vatican II:

The love of order, the sense of the beauty of a thing wherein nothing is extraneous or exaggerated or misplaced or tending to corrupt or obliterate the whole, is universal to mankind. It has the power to unite.

 

Imagine a band of Zulu warriors chanting a war song in polyphonic power, while Japanese samurai listen in proper silence. Imagine Onondaga chieftains traveling from far away to hear Jenny Lind sing Swedish folk songs just for them, and then departing with honor both given and received. That actually happened, in Rochester, in 1850.

 

Pope Francis wants the Mass to unite Catholics, rather than to be the site of division. It is right to want that. But can the means deliver? The question is not ecclesiological. I am not asking about what God can do. I am on the near side of the matter, asking about what does in fact raise the mind of man.

 

Now, the Novus Ordo Mass can be celebrated in a beautiful and reverent way. The reverence may be easier to secure than the beauty. Most priests are reverent. Most of the faithful who attend Mass want to be reverent. But beauty is another thing. That, for the Novus Ordo, takes work. You must first know what you’re doing. And the Novus Ordo gives plenty of room for people who do not know what they’re doing: bad songwriters, treacherous translators, peacocks in the choir, Miss Hospitality interrupting your prayer by welcoming you from the pulpit and advertising the hosts for today, the lounge pianist who plays like Billy Joel while you are coming back from Communion, tempting you to say, “Man, what are you doing here?” This disorder, sometimes a casual and breezy negligence, sometimes a showy display of tastes and talents or quasi-talents, sometimes both at once, and always a failure to conceive of the Mass as an artistic whole, is anti-evangelistic. If you want bad art, you can get a much higher quality of it – worse, with more talent for the bad – by staying home and listening to Beyoncé or somebody.

I don’t go to Mass for the art. I go to receive the Lord in the sacrament, and to hear the word of God, grit my teeth as I may when I hear it strangled in translation. The Mass is valid. I receive the Lord. When the priest and the people seem well-disposed, I remember to thank God for them and to pray for them, regardless of the clumsiness, and I ask God to remind me that taste doesn’t save or damn. Still, when I go to an ordinary Mass and I find no choir, I thank God. I shouldn’t have to do so. Were I a Byzantine Catholic, I’d never have occasion for it. When no one bugs me at the door with false welcomes, I am relieved. I shouldn’t have to look for the side door when I enter a strange church. I shouldn’t have to avoid the near occasion of toothache. Silence – another thing that the modern world flees – is a stream of living water. In silence I pray. Only then do I really notice people, they and I with our social guards down.

Sounds about right.

I sometimes use an older Latin link to the Divine office, and they have the words of the older mass every day on their site. And those words are beautiful and let me calm my restless mind to pray the office.

so why not let people attend a mass said in the mode of the older, silent mass, except using their own language? But if I read it correctly, that "rite"would be also forbidden (but what about the Anglican ordinate mass? or the Byzantine rite mass in the local language? Ah, but outsiders aren't supposed to attend them either).

For me, it is not an issue; Churches are full but demand distancing, and elders are not supposed to go into church, etc. and it has been impossible for me to attend mass for almost two years.  

Joy is busy with her penteocstal cult, and Kuya is mad at God, so it sort of leaves me to attend, as I did in the pre covid days, at 530 am with the busy cook.

now that covid restrictions have been partially dropped, I suppose I could go again, but alas, now I am simply too weak to stand for the service and even traveling to the nearby church would be difficult.

Sigh. 

Well, anyway, Ann Barnhardt has been quoted saying that like a cockroach infested restaurant, sometimes the only way to clean up the place is to destroy it, treat it, and then rebuild it.

Uh, Ann, Jesus said a bit differently: Don't pull out the weeds because you will also pull out the wheat. Wait til the harvest and the angels will sort it out.

A warning against the ones who want to schism the church and see themselves as the elect.

On the other hand, one wonders if the destruction of the church under this pope is God's way to purify the church.

again this reminds me of a vision of Katherine Emmerich:

a fake church, but a few who prayed allowed Mary to rebuild it.

In The Vision, pastor Wilkerson said the PC European and some American bishops will join the liberal protestants to make a NWO church that winks at sexual sin, and makes the church a social organization, not one about salvation.. As a pentecostal protestant, he saw the believing catholics would join with their protestant brothers.... something we see in South America and even here in the Philippines. That was prophecized 50 years ago. 

Our Lady at Akita said the same thing, that believing priests will be torn between the church and the truth, but the remedy is the rosary. Don Bosco also saw the church riding out the storm with the 2 pillers of the rosary and the Eucharist.

Well, I do pray the rosary, but after vatican II this was discouraged, along with other popular forms of piety that ordinary folks loved. 

Sigh.

So what do we do?

The theological types love CS Lewis as popular theologian, but ignore that Tolkien's influence is more pervasive: Because he posits beauty and gentleness as something good, and defends our search for beauty in art, writing, including fantasy, is not a flee from the world, but as a prisoner escaping the jail of ugliness of our surroundings.

His quote on the mass reminds us that the mass is not just about how it feeds our soul with beauty (a fact ignored by Vatican II) but about worshipping God, even in times of trouble, where we hold onto the truth even when the evil seems to be winning, and that this endurance is a better prayer than feeling happy, i.e. the fuzyyiness of spirituality of the religion of me me me  in contrast to standing beneath the cross.

from a letter to his son Michael:

 

You speak of ‘sagging faith’, however, that is quite another matter. In the last resort faith is an act of will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who has once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons (least of all anyone with any historical knowledge).

‘Scandal’ at most is an occasion of temptation – as indecency is to lust, which it does not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scapegoat.

But the act of will of faith is not a single moment of final decision: it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act – a state which must go on – so we pray for ‘final perseverance’.

The temptation to ‘unbelief’ (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to find an excuse for it outside us. The stronger the inner temptation the more readily and severely shall we be ‘scandalized’ by others.

I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the scandals, both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should not believe anymore, even if I had never met anyone in orders who was not both wise and saintly. I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call our Lord a fraud to His face. If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent – that is: garbled accounts of a demented megalomaniac (which is the only alternative), then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud. If not, however, then this spectacle is alas! only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter, and it does not affect faith at all – except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on our Lord’s behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalized heirs not with the saints, not crying out that we cannot ‘take’ Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd & cowardly Simon Peter, or the silly women like James’ mother, trying to push her sons.

It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really ‘happened’, and more to suppose that he did not say the things recorded all of him – so incapable of being ‘invented’ by anyone in the world at that time: such as ‘before Abraham came to be I am’ (John viii). ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John ix); or the promulgation of the Blessed Sacrament in John v: ‘He that he eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.’

We must therefore either believe in Him and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences. I find it for myself difficult to believe that anyone who has ever been to Communion, even once, with at least a right intention, can ever again reject Him without grave blame. (However, He alone knows each unique soul and its circumstances.)

but what about the superfical masses we attend (luckily here there is a lot of prayer going on: and no, people don't sing here either, meaning I suspect the quiet mass would be popular here too).

Again a quote from Tolkien:

 

Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children—from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn—open-necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). “It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. “It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand—after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.”

about that notorious CIA psychedelic experiment

 there is a trend among "holistic" types to use hallucinogens to cure depression but also to expand their "creativity" (See previous post).

Most conspicacy theorists or listeners to C2C are aware of the notorious CIA psychedelic experiment:

but a similar experiment was done in the 1990s that got less publicity.

and yes, like the wuhan lab that let lose the present day Covid epidemic, it was funded by the US Government.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences By Rick Strassman 

 A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. • A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research. • Provides a unique scientific explanation for the phenomenon of alien abduction experiences.

 From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. 

His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. 

In Strassman's volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. 

Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives. 

 Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by Rene Descartes to be the seat of the soul. 

DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the bold case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. 

italics mine. Of course you would know that it was not about enlightenment but about sex. Yet in both eastern and western religions (e.g. John of the Cross) the fact that meditation/prayer can increase the sexual urge is known: Which is why those seeking God will purify themselves by prayer and fasting and even bodily mortification to stop the temptation. 

But in "fake" religions, when this point is reached, often the guru who is pushing enlightenment goes on to sexually exploit his or her followers. Mohammed "married" a pre pubescent girl. Joseph Smith had polygamy.  Marciel seduced his seminarians. And I won't even go into the exploitation by gay priests, which is diabolic. Pagan religions often used drugs to induce visions of god, but they also had temple prostitutes (great is Diana of the Ephesians... Diana was a virgin goddess, but the one in Ephasus had a necklace of testicles and her temple was a place of prostitutes).

then we come to this part:

Strassman also believes that "alien abduction experiences" are brought on by accidental releases of DMT.

Some fundamentalist Christian books note that UFO abductions etc are probably diabolic in origin. And I have noted earlier that many use the person's imagination (so in the 1960s they had examination by an X Ray machine, but in the 1990s they were put in a tube, e.g. CT scan, and often needless stuck in them as in biopsies or similar to experience to get eggs for In Vitro fertilization). And then there is the Tolkien professor, who in his discussion of medieval literature notes that elven abduction resembles today's alien abduction tales.

The AmerIndians believe that there is "the other side", but again one does prayer and fasting and even "flesh offerings" for a spirit quest. And Mother Katherine Drexel once attended a ceremony and took a dose of the mushroom: She did not hallucinate but compared it to the state of deep prayer after receiving the Eucharist. But she did not repeat the experience. And my friend who took it said essentially the same thing, but her tribe did not use this practice so she was cautioned not to do it again by her tribal shamen. I think the reason is that the traditional use was rare, and associated with a huge group of people praying, but in the newer versions they use it for the high, not to seek God.  

One could say the same with meditation/Tm/Yoga/ scientology. Is it being done with humility, guided by a wise teacher, to seek the deity/enlightenment, or is it being done for health/wealth/ happiness? Yet even seeking "enlightenment" has a problem: One Buddhist who converted to Christianity said he did so because in Buddhism you only seek your own enlightenment, but Christians seek to help others.

The concept that there is a God, even the vague God of eastern religions, and that there might be bad spirits out there "on the other side" is known here in the East. (ever watch K dramas? The Tale of the Genghi?). But those concepts are missing in the modern secular mindset, which seems only to seek one own's egotistical desires.

and this has implications to the entire society, especially as these bozos are pushing these thing on their patients:

If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul

Malachi Martin's book on exorcism has two cases of men taken over by the "other side": One a priest who wanted to expand Christianity, the other a secular professor who had some innate ESP powers (found in about 5 percent of the population) and had an experience where he gave "permission" to something to expand his powers. Ironically, this professor studied meditation with an Eastern Guru, but when he reached the deep point of enlightenment, the guru refused to have anything to do with him: When asked why the Guru said: Well, when you meditate, the teacher slowly opens the lotus and when it is open completely, puts the treasure of englightenment inside and then closes the petals. But when your lotus was opened, I could not do it because you had already put evil there. And the Guru never meditated with him again.

One of the problem of the ancient pagan religions is that they did no incorporate ethical living. But of course, a person seeking the deity or enlightenment would have the ethics of God written in his heart. But ironically, in the ancient world, where too many of the temples had deteriorated into corruption, those seeking to live an ethical life sought the guidance of philosophy.

I have no experience with modern Eastern religions, but my Hindu friend's husband became an atheist because of the corruption of the local Hindu priests, and one does note in the history of Korea, that both the Buddhist and later the Confucian temples were closed by the government again for corruption: the former for helping the Japanese invasion of 1600 and the latter in the nineteenth century for their corruption.

So corruption of religion is not limited to the Vatican or the rich Protestant preachers. Indeed, one can see how this neopaganism that does not have any roots in the past can easily destroy the ethics of an entire society, since theses ideas stress personal (selfish) enlightenment to obtain power (often phrased as "creativity").

Sigh. 

Now I shouldn't condemn them too much, but pray. But alas I am hit with a major dry spell in prayers, and with the virus, haven't been to church in over a year, and our shutdown ,which was being lifted, is now back on, so no Easter duty for me.

Sigh.